Free field guide for BEAD builders
Seven Ways to Lose a Pole Position
Seven short stories. Seven expensive mistakes in BEAD make-ready. Each one is a 3 to 5 minute read, and each one is avoidable.
Email only. The PDF arrives in your inbox. The companies in the book are fictional. The poles are not.
The bottleneck moved to the pole.
3.4 to 3.8 millionpoles on BEAD aerial routes
42%of BEAD fiber is expected to go aerial
May 7, 2026new FCC pole attachment clocks took effect
What is inside
- The Clipboard Cowboy. Manual survey against aerial data acquisition.
- The Pole That Said No. Pole loading analysis and failed poles.
- Thirty Days to Be Awesome. The FCC clocks, self-help and complete applications.
- The Drone From the Discount Aisle. Equipment, documentation and funding rules.
- The Gig Worker Gambit. Standards, accountability and a W-2 workforce.
- The California Curveball. GO 95, utility templates and load calculation exports.
- The Closeout Cliff. As-builts, closeout and milestone payments.
Who it is for
BEAD subgrantees, engineering and make-ready firms, construction managers and utility attachment teams. Anyone who needs pole data to be complete on the first submission.
Who wrote it
Alamo Airborne. We capture poles by drone and LiDAR and deliver the result engineer-ready, with W-2 pilots only. The last page of the book is an honest assessment of where we stand, and where others do good work too.
A BEAD route on your desk?
Pick one route. Alamo Airborne captures 50 poles at no cost and delivers them engineer-ready. If someone else beats the result, hire them.